Pallister stands firm in challenging Quebec secularism law

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/12/2019 (1596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Brian Pallister is contemplating whether the Manitoba government should seek intervenor status if a constitutional challenge of Quebec’s Bill 21 reaches the Supreme Court.

“It’s very likely, but we’ll wait and see what our partners are doing, as we’re trying to co-ordinate efforts in respect of gathering support to oppose this piece of misguided legislation,” he said.

The Quebec Court of Appeal rejected a request to suspend the central elements of the province’s secularism law Thursday. Observers expect the case will continue up the echelons and could eventually reach the country’s highest court.

In an afternoon scrum after his state of the province address, Pallister wouldn’t speculate on whether his provincial government would seek to intervene in other court cases leading up to a Supreme Court challenge — if it were to happen — but said he’s spoken with all his other provincial and territorial counterparts about challenging Bill 21.

Pallister had an audience of about 1,300 hanging on his every word at the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce luncheon Thursday, but he chose not to reveal any new initiatives during his approximately 40-minute speech.

He did include several analogies about mountain biking, however, and described how a lop-sided penny farthing bicycle (which has a large front wheel and a tiny back one) was akin to how imbalanced the provincial government was before the Tories took over in 2016.

“It’s kind of like the government we inherited: it was very, very large on the public-sector side, very small on the private-sector side. It was very large on the spending side, not as large as it could be on the revenue side. That analogy I think works pretty well for what we inherited,” Pallister said.

The premier also rattled off a top-10 list of fiscal policy changes his government has undertaken and some challenges Manitoba still faces, including an estimated billion dollars in possible lawsuit costs stemming from ongoing court cases.

Other challenges include fighting the federal government for sustainable health-care funding and “rational regulatory assessments” on environmental projects, Pallister said.

“There are changes that have to happen at the federal level. Some of them happened about an hour ago, others will happen over the next few years and months. Those changes have to happen,” he said, shortly after federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer announced his resignation in the House of Commons.

Pallister saved some of his strongest rhetoric for denouncing Quebec’s Bill 21, which bars public-sector employees from wearing religious symbols while at work. He urged the audience to continue standing up for Canadians’ rights and freedoms, including religious expression.

“(Bill 21) is a charter of rights violation and a threat to the well-being of the people of Quebec. But it is a threat also to the well-being of the people of this country when our reputation globally is threatened by such initiatives,” he said.

“We must stand up and Manitobans always have — at Vimy Ridge, on the beach at Normandy, in the deserts of Afghanistan and, yes, in the legislature and in the House of Commons. But in everyday actions we take, we do not stand back when other peoples’ rights are threatened.”

Opposition leaders Wab Kinew (NDP) and Dougald Lamont (Liberal) took in the premier’s speech, and described it as short on substance.

Kinew said the speech lacked any meaningful mention of crime and public safety issues, which have been top of mind for Manitobans of late. He also questioned why Pallister was now musing about helping with a court challenge of Quebec’s secularism law when the premier previously voted against an NDP motion calling for such a move last month.

“So I don’t know why they voted that down, and now he’s trying to put the cape on,” Kinew said.

While all MLAs unanimously supported the premier’s resolution in the house Nov. 27 to support religious rights in Manitoba, Lamont said taking it a step further by seeking intervenor status would show the government is willing to “put our money where our mouth is.”

“If the premier really feels that strongly about it, he should be willing to intervene,” he said.

Lamont also put out a 10-page rebuttal to Pallister’s state of the province speech an hour before it started.

— with files from The Canadian Press

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @_jessbu